Project Management Essentials/Fannie Mae

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Alan Zucker

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Alan Zucker has over 25-years of hands-on experience managing projects and programs, and leading project organizations.

Alan’s first major project was automating the United States Treasury securities auctions in the wake of the Salomon Brothers scandal.

Alan then spent 14-years in the telecommunications industry during the exciting post-deregulation period. Alan worked his way up from being a project manager to leading a business team of project managers, business analysts and testers. He established the first PMO within the CFO organization leading cross-organizational, strategic initiatives.

For the past ten-years, Alan has worked in the financial services industry working in both PMO and execution organizations. He has managed multi-million dollar strategic initiatives, and has lead large teams executing over 200 projects a year.

Agile Transformation—It’s About the People

schedule 1 year ago

Sold Out!

45 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

The Agile Manifesto declared independence from constraining, process-centric software development methodologies. The Manifesto advocated for a product-focused, team-centric approach. Organizations embracing Agile must remember that people are the key to its success.

Agile represents a culture transformation as well as a new way of working. Some organizations may struggle with the transformation. They are accustomed to carefully implementing a rule-based methodology, rather than a value-based set of principles.

There is no single path to becoming Agile or sustaining its accomplishments. Here are some recommendations for the journey:

Embrace Enthusiasts, Avoid Purists

Organizations adopting Agile need ardent enthusiasts to support the transformation. The enthusiasts should be knowledgeable and experienced practitioners who can bear witness to its benefits.

Manage the Organizational Change

An Agile transformation is a significant organizational and cultural change. The change will threaten power structures and disrupt established business relationships. Many employees will initially be skeptical or, at worst, resist these changes. Consequently, Agile transformations should be thoughtfully planned and executed. Simply declaring that "we are now Agile" will not work.

Focus on People Over Process and Tools

The Agile Manifesto declares that people and collaboration should be valued over tools and processes. Agile fundamentally puts people at the center of the software development process.

The Project Box: Beyond the Triple Constraint

schedule 1 year ago

Sold Out!

45 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Traditionally, project managers are told to optimize scope subject to constraints on time, cost, and quality. This is embodied in the expression, “better, faster, cheaper—choose two.” The phrase has become a rhetorical distraction to effective project management. It presumes a magic bullet; if you can precisely balance the constraints you will be successful. In reality, the triple constraint poses a calculus problem that has no tangible solution.

The project box introduces a new and better paradigm for describing the interaction of time, cost, quality, and scope for many software projects—particularly Agile projects. The project box simplifies the calculus of managing the project constraints:

Duration is set,

Scope is time-boxed and negotiable,

Quality is both time-boxed and imperfections are expected, and

Cost is proportional to duration.

The project box represents a paradigm shift for managing software projects. It recognizes the primacy of time and reorients the other dimensions accordingly. To traditionalists, the project box provides a new worldview for managing time, scope, quality and cost. To Agilests, it provides a better representation of their principles and replaces the inverted triangle.